I frequently encounter “progressives” who argue that political involvement is the only way to achieve significant change. Refusal to participate in the process is “defeatist” and “irresponsible.”

This, apparently, is what passes for gritty realism on much of the “progressive” Left. That argument is pessimistic beyond belief.

The events of the past two years should be enough to make that clear to even the most starry-eyed goo-goo. Obama’s election and the large Democratic majorities elected in 2008 are probably a generational high-water mark for the possibilities of “progressive” politics. At the time of the election, it was described by exultant Democrats as a watershed comparable to 1932 or 1980.

And what happened?

Right off the bat, Obama revelaled himself as another Clinton, staffing his administration with bankers and neoliberal Clinton alumni — people like Summers, Geithner and Emanuel. And the opposition, after the biggest political curb-stomping since 1964, immediately began demonstrating the near-worthlessness of this unprecedented majority coalition.

This was the most powerful “progressive” coalition in over a generation, the most powerful likely to be elected for another generation to come — and it achieved a bit of minor tweaking around the edges of corporate power. The word that comes to mind is “Sisyphean.” Decades of effort to get the rock almost to the top of the hill, and then you start over again — and over, and over.

If the only way to achieve a free, decentralized society is through control of the state, we might as well give up.

Fortunately, I don’t think that’s the case. In fact it’s the goo-goos who are defeatist, when they argue that the only “realistic” hope for changing society is the same depressing prospect of rolling the rock uphill, once again, for yet another attempt at building an even larger majority and electing an even more progressive president next generation, and thereby securing sufficient control of the state to — maybe, just possibly — have somewhat better luck next time.

The real alternative is described by the Wobbly slogan “building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” Our real hope is building the kind of society we want through our own efforts while treating the state as an obstacle to be routed around.

The key is networked, bottom-up, stigmergic organization — the organizational form associated with wikis, file-sharing networks, and fourth generation warfare. We’ll already be well on the road to victory when we realize we can build the kind of society we want right here and now without permission, instead of waiting for some bureaucratic committee to spend a hundred thousand man-hours getting everybody on the same page.

The cost of effectively evading and circumventing state interference is probably a hundredth that of overcoming the state’s inertia and changing its policies from within. For example: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act may very well never be repealed, but things like bittorrent, proxy servers, mirror sites and darknets have turned it into a joke that nobody even pays attention to.

A recurring theme in my writing is the function of so-called “safety” codes, zoning laws, licensing regimes, “intellectual property,” and so on and so on, in imposing artificial high capital outlay costs and overhead on small producers and criminalizing low-overhead production in the informal sector.

Changing these laws is — to repeat — Sisyphean. The solution is not to spend years organizing to repeal them. The solution is to bypass them, just as the file-sharing movement bypasses copyright law: Decentralize production and enable encrypted networked local exchange, to the point that the alternative economy operates under the state’s radar.

In a time when virtually anyone can afford a “printing press” or a “music studio,” the primary rationale for the big media corporations — the high cost of the means of cultural production — has disappeared. Copyright law is the main thing preserving the control of the old proprietary content companies over decentralized production technology. And the unenforceability of copyright law is destroying their power.

The same thing is true of patents and trademarks in the industrial realm. Thanks to the new generation of CNC tools, the means of physical production are becoming amazingly cheap. “Intellectual property” is the main weapon used by corporations to retain control of distributed production.

But patents are rapidly becoming as unenforceable as copyright. They’re cost-effective only when the transaction costs of enforcement are low: When goods are manufactured by a handful of oligopoly firms, and distributed through a few giant retail chains. When knockoff goods are produced by garage factories serving a local market of a few thousand people, the patent regime becomes unsustainable.

Instead of working to change the law, we only need to work — at a tiny fraction of the cost — on ways to ignore it with impunity. Don’t change the law — make it irrelevant.

17 comments

"The solution is to bypass them, just as the file-sharing movement bypasses copyright law: decentralize production, and enable encrypted networked local exchange, to the point that the alternative economy operates under the state’s radar."

Nathan: I think the changing economic landscape will alter the balance of power quite a bit. As overall employment levels stagnate and slowly decline, and levels of unemployment and underemployment continue to rise, people will be looking for ways to meet more needs through exchange in the informal economy. And the more microenterprises there are making food, clothing, etc., for modest numbers of clients, the higher the costs of detecting them and enforcing legal restrictions. The sandwich guy, I believe, was running what was essentially a conventional business outside of a conventional brick-and-mortar location: a pretty large clientele. What about people who follow even less formal business models, making dresses, cakes, growing tomatoes, etc., for networks of their neighbors — and what happens when there are more of them, and police forces are shorter of revenue and resources?

Joe: Touche — except for any substantive argument concerning the relative effectiveness of political action compared to building alternatives, or any substantive response to my arguments on the futility of political action. Just repetition of liberal devil-terms.

I had a feeling that might not come across the way I meant it. I meant you could add those terms to your list of names progressives use to denounce anyone who doubts the effectiveness of playing within the political system. The other day I was following a blog "debate" (more like a shouting match) between some leftists of a Chomskyite variety and some anarchists, and one of the more vocal leftists kept calling the anarchists "children" and telling them to "grow up" because they had the gall to disagree with his belief that the state was necessary to keep corporate power at bay. For a guy who apparently considered himself a radical lefty, his attitude was awfully similar to the standard progressive attitude toward libertarians, or anyone else who fails to see the attraction of enlightened government.

I think this is already happening to a significant degree. For example, there are a ton of Chinese sellers on eBay who will send you merchandise directly, eliminating import duties and sales tax (and income tax had the seller been a U.S. citizen). It just isn't possible or productive for federal, state and local governments to keep up with them all. The Internet will continue to enable an ever-greater amount of individual-to-individual exchange, and much of this will be hidden from the government or just not cost-effective to track. What I'd like to see is widespread adoption of an anonymous digital currency like Pecunix. That would really seal the deal. The only path to freedom in our lifetime is to bankrupt the state or make it irrelevant.

Doc, I think anyone participating in the alt economy would need to keep some funds in traditional fiat currency during the transition period, but I would hope that someday surgeons would be freed from dealing with the state too. Clearly, some have already had enough: http://vimeo.com/11378278. I'm not sure I understand where you are going with the research scientist question. They will be paid by whatever means is mutually acceptable by the parties involved. I think research will do just fine in the absence of taxpayer funding, although it may become a bit more focused on things of demonstrable value.

What about those who actively fight the state? In other words, if drug lords routinely have cops and judges bumped off then aren't they private actors simply defending themselves against thieves and thugs? If drug lords where actually of making a large part of country "anarchic" because they can defend it to well against the government and no one's game to enforce the law then have drug lords achieved a form of freedom?

I’ve sometimes mused about just what sort of things could be involved in “building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old”, both with thought experiments and reflecting on analogous historical cases, both in themselves and considering what the establishment does about them. Here’s some of what I came up with:-

– The Strangite Mormons set up their own parallel structure on Beaver Island, suffusing and working through the formal structure of civil government there. The establishment tried and failed to overcome Strang through conventional legal processes, and then stood by when he was assassinated by notionally independent individuals and the Strangites were ethnically cleansed by a notionally independent mob.

– Similar things occurred with the main body of Mormons, with similar counter-measures including the extermination order and the establishment manipulations in relation to the so-called Republic of Tooele.

– Although Lincoln was opposed to secession, he was careful not to fire the first shot in response but instead to place the secessionists in an intolerable situation so that they would do so and give him a diplomatic/political advantage. However, the US Postal Service continued into seceding areas even after the outbreak of hostilities, as withdrawing it could have signalled an acceptance of a lack of jurisdiction there.

– When Biafra seceded from Nigeria, the postal service similarly continued; the Biafrans simply seized every arriving van, sending none back. This produced an intolerable situation for the federal government, which initiated hostilities and gave away a diplomatic/political advantage in that case.

– As civil disabilities were gradually removed in the 19th century, the Westminster System with a largely first past the post electoral approach produced a sizeable Irish parliamentary contingent (unlike the under-representation it manufactures for most third parties, as they are usually geographically dispersed) which nevertheless had no hope of becoming directly involved in government, while an extra-parliamentary group also developed to act in parallel outside Westminster. These MPs evolved a strategy of “join and sabotage”, basically crippling all government unless and until reforms specific to Ireland went through. The establishment responded in a number of ways: changing parliamentary procedure to allow things to be forced through, e.g. with the guillotine; by Home Rule initiatives from one side of politics; by blowing a scandal over Parnell out of proportion, i.e. beyond just him, and so eroding the Irish parliamentary bloc for a generation; and by the other side in turn resorting to informal sabotage of those initiatives and of the Irish parliamentary bloc, e.g. in the Curragh Incident. This in turn led to weight being switched to the extra-parliamentary side, with familiar results.

Taking all these things together, I would suggest:-

– An informal structure for education and various services, functioning as interconnected, endowed charitable institutions much like monasteries and (military or paramilitary) commandries under the feudal system, including transitional mutual provident funds organised on a self liquidating, sinking fund basis (people would pay in a proportion of earnings, with a target in excess of which they could make withdrawals, but the target would be reset to zero when they reached an age that would decrease with time, after which they could withdraw all of what they had paid in; operating surpluses from the accruing endowment would fund members’ retirements, health care, etc.). Zionist organisations under the Palestinian Mandate offer a model. These would make grass roots economic reforms tending towards distributism (starting with fleet leasing of equipment to non-corporate businesses, with a fixed discount per full time employee registered as saving with the mutual provident funds owning the equipment, say), and a cadre and training for self defence. It’s important that there should be several of these at different stages of implementation at any one time.

– A join and sabotage approach, starting with the lowest levels of representative government, i.e. municipal. Again, this should take place in several areas.

– Wherever enough formal legal authority could be attained, impose swingeing grade-related poll taxes on public servants of any level of government. The object here is to claw back the drains that the wider government structure would impose on any regions where the new structure began succeeding; naturally, there would be less unemployment and wealth transfers into the regions for them, and higher income tax takes etc. drawing funds out of the regions. I think taxes on public servants just qualify as ethical, though it is borderline.

– As, when and if the establishment started to retaliate through formal channels or informal ones (as history shows it does, when the former fails), switch weight from one region to another and from one institution to another – the guerilla principle. Physical defence must be available to counter physical force, at least to buy time and opportunities to regroup, ideally only in a tactically defensive way although all the while strategically advancing, never giving the establishment a chance to claim the diplomatic/political advantage of not directly starting it.

Finally, readers might be interested in a recent comment of mine at John Quiggin’s blog, in which I had this sort of thing in mind.

Doc: Cryptoman beat me to it. The idea is that the share of our total subsistence needs met through wage labor, and produced for the official cash nexus by traditional hierarchical organizations, will be a shrinking island. An increasing share of needs will be met in the informal and household sectors, with trade organized through barter and credit-clearing networks. Some functions organized through the cash nexus with wage labor and purchased by conventional money may persist for a long time. But the larger the one sector becomes relative to the other, the greater the bargaining power ordinary people achieve against the portions of the conventional economy that they still participate in.

Just to take a very partial example: Imagine, if almost everyone owned their living space free and clear, avoided credit card debt, had a large vegetable garden, and kept their pantry stocked up. Imagine, consequently, that it was common for people to cut their work weeks back to thirty hours, to retire earlier, and have more single-income households. Wouldn't that have a huge effect on typical conditions of employment?

Or imagine that most people get their basic medical care through affordable contract-practice clinics for membership fees of $50/month, most minor surgery was done on an outpatient basis, some inpatient care was done in a ward of a few beds maintained at each clinic, and most health insurance was for catastrophic care. Wouldn't that have some effect on bargaining leverage when it came to major, high-tech forms of surgery?

PML: Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful strategic analysis.

Re the postal service, just as an aside, if the Federal mail trains continued over the border under the nominal supervision of Confederate postal authorities, how would that be distinguishable in practice from the postal authorities in the CSA functioning as a part of the U.S. Post Office? Was it a case of both sides being able to find face-saving legal interpretations, with the Confederate postal authorities claiming to be independent and the Federals claiming to be exercising jurisdictionn over them?

The join and sabotage thing sounds a bit like the Free State Project in New Hampshire, and Callenbach's "Ecotopia" scenario not pushed to the point of de jure secession. It also sounds a bit like Bookchin's old "libertarian municipalist" agenda.

In addition to the things you've mentioned, I think a central emphasis should be to take maximum advantage of technological changes that shift the balance of power between offense and defense and increase the transaction costs of enforcement.

Good point at Quiggin's blog. The main reason for the state social safety net was the lack of resources of the working classes. As described by Thompson, Bookchin et al, their mutual welfare state was quite capable at organizing the resources they *did* have. So in a society without income disparities resulting from artificial property rights and scarcity rents, where the costs of subsistence were lower and average income higher, a self-organized welfare state might function quite well.

Re the postal service, just as an aside, if the Federal mail trains continued over the border under the nominal supervision of Confederate postal authorities, how would that be distinguishable in practice from the postal authorities in the CSA functioning as a part of the U.S. Post Office? Was it a case of both sides being able to find face-saving legal interpretations, with the Confederate postal authorities claiming to be independent and the Federals claiming to be exercising jurisdictionn over them?

There's a misunderstanding in "mail trains", and probably in just what was involved in postal systems in those days. In all countries, it wasn't a fully separated bureaucracy doing its own stuff, it worked with a lot of contracting out and granting offices with privileges to people who would do the work. That is, it was in the process of bringing previous people and operations inside a growing bureaucracy, it wasn't a bureaucracy growing from the inside. So, there were trains that were given privileges and contracts for carrying mail, local postmasters who got some salary but also charged fees, and so on. But that meant, it was ordinary local people and ordinary local businesses that did the post, wearing another hat to their ordinary hat; the central and formal part of the postal system had to work within that reality. Where Biafra could and did seize post vans, in the 1860s seizures like that would only have been seizing ordinary trains, carts, horses etc. that just had "post" stickers on them – not a loss to the postal system but to the contractors et al, with all the consequent political cost.

Curiously enough, in his North America describing that time and place, Trollope gives a certain amount of informed analysis to the ordinary operation of the posts because, as he freely acknowledged, he knew about the area as it was his day job.

@Kevin Carson – don't forget "terrorist" orgs like Hezbollah, which provide societies needs and services such as medical care in the face of brutal state repression by Israel. These people are surviving, but living conditions could be so much better.

Antiks72–Good point. Another good example is social programs administered by the original Black Panthers. One of the ways networked resistance orgs build support is by outcompeting the state in offering services to local populations, as John Robb has pointed out.